Rebirth
by Jathara
Summary: She is moments from death, and she knows it. [Or: the death and awakening of Carly Nagisa]


She is moments from death.

She is well aware of this, somewhere in her mind, but she can't even find enough breath to scream as she plummets hundreds of feet towards the unforgiving concrete below. The cold wind bites at her skin as she falls, but she can hardly feel it. There are no bright lights, no flashbacks, only a deep sense of regret – regret that she failed Jack, regret that she wasn't strong enough, regret that she never truly succeeded at all, in her career or in love or in dueling.

There is anger, too, buried in there: anger at the man who had cut her short like that, of course (_and who wouldn't feel that?_) but a deeper anger, too, a near-rage at the man who she had risked herself and pushed herself and strained herself for, who she had abandoned one of the best scoops of her career for, and who had never showed her even a hint of gratitude. Her death was inevitable; she had no hope of survival, and in those bare-moments it never even crossed her mind that she was anything but dead. She was anger and regret, a descendent falling star.

The one thing that surrounds her – pervasively so – is the face of Misty Lola, model, duelist, _prophet_. She had seen this coming, had warned Carly as she held her face with impossibly tender hands. She looks almost mournful on the screens, and the reporter's last thought before she hit the cruel, unforgiving ground was a simple _you were right_.

There is a sickening crack, and her cards scatter across her body, motionless.

She feels no pain – and in some part of her brain that surprises her, _isn't death supposed to hurt? _As the violet fog sets in, enveloping her broken form in its cool embrace, she lays still – unable to move – and finds its companionship strangely comforting.

It is silent, for a moment, and then she hears a humming sound, perfect in its rhythm – much like a clock, ticking sixty times per second. It is faint, but it's picking up volume a little at each moment and making her shiver. There is something oddly organic about it, and yet in its precision and exactness it feels dead and detached.

_Is this the Reaper?_ she wonders, and for a moment it seems to falter.

_I suppose I am_, it replies, its voice echoingly deep and haunting your mind, as if the dead and damned spoke alongside it.

The buzzing hum grows painfully loud, and from the corner of her eye she sees something – black and umber, miniscule and yet leviathan, and whenever she tries to focus on it, it flits elsewhere, tantalizingly out of reach.

_I have come to make a deal with you, of sorts. _

She tries to speak, but finds herself paralytic; she is lifeless. _Why me? Who are you? _she thinks back, and the creature answers:

_You interest me. You are very angry, you know; you've hidden it, under all of that regret and shame, but the rage in your heart burns brightly. I carry the same fury. My name is Aslla piscu, for the place where me and mine are bound; I am of the Bird of Fate of the Jibakushin. _

She hesitates, afraid, before she answers with all the fury that so calls to the god: _I won't hurt Jack! _

_ Carly. _

Its voice is stern and powerful, and in a moment, she is on her knees, able to move once again. From the shadows, a deck forms in front of her, forty cards worn around the edges with age and disuse and stained with dust and spilt coffee and what must have been fresh blood, not yet crusted and darkened. Without drawing a single card, she knew it was her deck; the blood was hers, and it should have sickened her, but the Earthbound God's presence in her mind was both pervasive and persuasive in its emotionless void.

_See your fate_. _See _his _fate. _

Taking a halting breath – entirely unnecessary, in her current state, but comforting nonetheless – she draws a card.

It is Prophecy of a Future King, and for a moment, she doesn't understand. He is already King, at least in her mind; Yusei may have defeated him in a duel, but he has no _class, _no _style, _none of the royal feel that Jack had. But her deck has never lied to her: when it promises fortune, she finds fortune, and when it gives her an omen, something inevitably goes wrong. It's the most honest thing in her life, and so she asks the God for insight.

The God shows her its intent, then, in images and in sound: the crackling of flames and screech of a raging dragon, the nightmarish castle (_and what are nightmares but dreams? _something in her brain hisses), _her _Jack Atlus in _her _bed, a Dark King as she is a Dark Queen. It is horrifying, in some regards: the end of the world, the corpses and the dead, listless necromantic constructs their only company. She was scared, for a moment, to be alone, and the God sensed her uncertainty.

_You will have compatriots, and you will find them quite loyal, so long as you remain loyal yourself. _It shows her them: first an oddly familiar man, dark skin and pale hair and accompanied by a gargantuan spider, whom it identifies as _Rudger Godwin _and his master _Uru_, and then a strange man it identifies as _Demak_, serving a monkey it called _Cusillu_, a blue-haired madman it calls _Kiryu _(and _that _name is familiar) and his cyclopsian God _Ccapac Apu, _the angry man from the Fortune Cup, Boomer, and the leviathan who accompanies him, who he serves (_Chacu Challhua_).

And, after a moment's pause, the one companion who convinced her totally: beautiful and graceful, calm with a boiling fury underneath, perfect like porcelain and _waiting for her:_ Misty Lola, companion and servant to Ccarayhua.

She has a sudden, overwhelming feel of _not worthy_ – these were some of the most brilliant men out there, and undeniably the most brilliant woman out there, and she (_lowly reporter, nothing special, can't even win a duel_) has been chosen to join them.

The deity settles in front of her, and she sees it for the first time – as tall as a skyscraper, with wings that could surely topple even the Arcadia headquarters. It is horrific, an Eldritch abomination, and yet in her now-hazy mind it seems almost beautiful in its power. This is the Bird of Fate, and this is the one who has given her her fate – as someone meaningful, as someone powerful, as someone who doesn't have to be alone. The fog is rolling in even more thickly, surrounding her, choking her.

She reaches a hand out, and the darkness envelops her entirely.


End file.
